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Demelza rather feels as if her head is spinning.

Earlier in the day, she and Ross had attended the doctor's office at the suggestion of Mindy, who had been so kind as to show Demelza the pregnancy tests back when she had been sick on the street on her very first day of work. She had been told that seeing a doctor would be necessary, that they would want to take a picture of the baby so as to know for certain when it would be due and that they would want to check on the health of the baby, too, but it's all so strange to Demelza that the appointment had been a bit overwhelming. Ross had done his best to help, of course, as he always will, but now that he's kissed her and gone back to work, Demelza finds she doesn't want to go home quite yet.

She has so many questions and she knows of one person who's had a child before. Perhaps his world is not quite like Darrow either, but she suspects it's more like Darrow than her own.

She uses her portable telephone to call Abby and ask if she'll stay with Julia a little while longer, then changes the direction of her course toward Candlewood Apartments. It's only once she's nearly there that she realizes Galen may not be at home, but now that she's come this far, she figures she might as well try. If he isn't, then she'll go home to her daughter and put her questions to bed, at least for now.

As she stands in front of his building and presses the buzzer for his flat, she places her free hand against her stomach. She's so slight that the roundness has become noticeable to her already, though Ross insists she's as small as ever. It's there, however, that first indication she's with child and although Demelza hates the way her body changes with pregnancy, she can't help but smile just a little. Soon enough this child will make him or herself known in much more obvious ways, but for now it's still quiet. Still just for her.

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He doesn't get a lot of company. Really, that's largely on him, when he doesn't know a lot of people here and has made little effort to change that, but as it is, the sound of his buzzer going off comes as something of a surprise, rare an occurrence as it is. The upside of it is, aside from the fact that he wouldn't want much company anyway, that he has a pretty good idea of who it might be, with only one or two real candidates. He can't think of anyone other than Demelza or Kara who'd be dropping by unexpectedly, and he has no reason to object to seeing either of them.

With that in mind, Galen doesn't hesitate to get up and buzz whoever it is in, not needing to wait and find out who's there. This whole thing — the idea of living in an apartment in the first place — is still frakking weird to him anyway. One of these days, he should probably start getting used to it, but that would require settling down here, and he's not sure that's something he knows how to do.

As she heads for his flat, Demelza wonders if perhaps she's intruding, though the thought doesn't stop her as she approaches his door and raps sharply. Her mind is still filled with the information from her appointment and she needs to speak with someone and knows better than distract Ross while he is working. Her husband is a brilliant man, but he's very dedicated and very single minded when it comes to things such as work.

Besides, it's good for them both to have friends of their own and while it pleases her deeply that her husband and Galen do seem to get along, he was her friend first and she feels as if he has the sort of knowledge she's looking for. She's also certain he won't judge her, not when he's been so terribly kind in the past.

"Hello," she says brightly when he opens the door, breaking into a smile she knows she couldn't control even if she wanted to. "Tis not too early, is it? In Darrow I know folks don't seem to call on others as we did back home, but I can't seem to break the habit just yet."

Standing aside to let her in after he's opened the door, Galen shakes his head, smiling a little in turn. "No, it's not too early at all," he says. "Come on in. I'm glad you stopped by." Calling on people, as she's put it, may not be a thing here like it apparently was for her, but he doesn't mind the company, if only because it's Demelza, and it isn't like he has too much else to be doing instead. If he'd been on his way out the door or something, it might be a different story, but as it is, this is as good a time as any for her to stop by.

He's not really used to having people over, though, that sort of thing hardly necessary back with the fleet and irrelevant here, where he only really knows a handful of people. For a moment, he isn't quite sure how to proceed, then nods towards the kitchen. "Can I get you anything?"

"Oh, perhaps just some water," Demelza answers, smiling at Galen, pleased for some reason that he's asked. She feels as though she's so often such a poor hostess, forgetting what to offer people and when that it's a relief to be in Darrow, where the rules aren't quite so steadfast and where it's acceptable to ask someone if they want anything instead of the proper drink at the proper time.

She'd never quite been able to establish when tea should be served and when it was right to offer canary instead of port. In Darrow it doesn't matter.

"Thank 'ee," she adds a moment later. "My head is all rattled still and some water'd be quite nice."

"Yeah, no problem," Galen says, shrugging as he makes his way to the kitchen, where he gets a glass out of a cupboard. There'd been a few essentials here when he showed up to have this place waiting for him, something that's proven to be for the best. It's just one more thing he's out of the habit of having to consider, maybe all the more so because he doesn't have people over often. Having just enough here for himself wouldn't do him much good now, with Demelza having stopped by.

Looking over at her from the other room, he asks, "Your head okay? What's going on?"

"Oh, tis only that me and Ross did go to see the doctor for the first time today," she tells Galen, following him into the kitchen simply because it's a room she's always been comfortable in. From an early age, she'd been the one feeding her brothers, baking and cooking and cleaning, and then at Nampara she had been in charge of the entire kitchen once Ross had realized how poor Prudie's cooking was compared to Demelza's. She loves being in the kitchen and wishes every day for a much larger room in which to cook now that they live in Darrow.

"There's nothing like it where I'm from," she admits. "The doctor asked so many questions and I didn't rightly know how to answer all of 'em. She drew blood and took samples and did an ultrasound. I didn't even know what it were when she tried to start."

It had terrified her, even though she had been told of the picture taking. She just hadn't known what to expect.

"Gods, yeah, that's got to be strange, if you don't already know how it all works," Galen says, nodding, handing her a glass of water once he's filled it. "Even for people who do know, I think it sometimes is." There's a difference, after all, between knowing about it in theory and experiencing it firsthand. He'd been pretty amazed when Cally was pregnant, the two of them actually having been happy then, and none of it had been new to him. For Demelza, he can only imagine how much more the case that would be, and definitely an understandable reason for her head to feel rattled. "How'd it go? Everything look good so far?"

"Oh, everything is fine with the baby," Demelza assures him, taking a sip of her water. "Tis just... tis strange. Where I'm from, the surgeons barely even see us when we deliver the baby. Doctor Choake, the one who was supposed to deliver Julia, he was angry at being interrupted during his breakfast and asked to come out in a storm. Julia was delivered by one of our neighbours and our kitchen maid."

And Prudie had dropped her right on the floor, bruising her poor little face, but she had recovered from it quite well with no lasting ill effects.

"And that's usual, especially with the poor folk," she says. "They can't even see surgeons most of the time, they can't afford the cost. And now tis all free and scheduled every few weeks."

He hadn't been too worried, thinking Demelza would probably have told him right off if there were something wrong, but still, Galen relaxes a little when she says that everything is fine. As isolated as he's been since arriving in Darrow, there are few people here he cares about as much as her, and the last thing he wants is for anything to happen to the baby. Not that he'd wish that sort of thing on anyone, but especially people like Demelza and Ross don't deserve to have to go through something like that.

"Yeah, I guess that's a pretty big change," he says with a slight exhale of a laugh. "Especially once you factor all of that technology into it."

"And the doctor kept using words I don't yet understand," Demelza admits, taking a sip of her water to give herself a moment to consider the things she needs to ask. Perhaps it's not fair to put this on Galen, but there are few people in Darrow she trusts as much as she does him. There are books, of course, and she's done a fair bit of reading on carrying a child, but there are more specifics they have mentioned that Demelza doesn't understand and she's not yet discovered in her reading.

"He was speaking of... of things t'be done after the baby is born," she tells him. "Ways to keep ourselves from having another baby if we don't want one and t'be honest I don't understand all of what he's saying. The doctor who helped me the evening when I was ill after work talked about it, too, but she didn't explain."

"Oh," Galen replies, brow shooting up. Now that she's said so, it makes sense, but knowing very little, all things considered, about where Demelza come from, it hadn't occurred to him that they might not have had birth control there. For him, it's only ever been a simple fact of life. In spite of all the talk about people needing to have babies, preventing that had been all but a necessity among some of the crew. They couldn't have all their pilots getting knocked up, not when there was every chance they might not make it back. "So I guess you didn't have anything like that before?"

"No, not at all," Demelza answers, shaking her head. "'Course where I'm from, having a baby is just natural and most women have lots of 'em. Maybe not so much in the higher class families, but I think that's because..."

She pauses, grinning shyly, then decides she can say such things to Galen.

"I do think gentlefolk don't often marry for love and it do seem to me that if you marry someone for their status and not for how you feel about 'em, the act required to create life may not be somethin' you're all that interested in doing." And so they have fewer children, producing one or two simply because it's expected of them.

"Yeah, I think that'd do it," Galen says with a short laugh, smiling warmly at the way she puts it. He's not sure he could ever manage to talk about the subject that delicately, more prone to being straightforward than anything else, just like the rest of the crew. While he may not see a reason to talk around it like that, though, he knows things were different where Demelza is from, what she's telling him just further proof of that. There were still probably people for whom that was the case, but if so, it wasn't nearly as prevalent, and certainly not in the fleet, where they were all just about starting from scratch in the first place. Status was determined by what colony you were from and what ship you were on, what you did, but those distinctions rarely seemed to go beyond the individuals themselves. Marrying for status wouldn't have had much of a point. They were all frakked anyway. "If that's not happening, then there's no way they're going to be having a whole bunch of kids."

"Where I'm from, the surgeons do tell women they ent supposed to take any sort of enjoyment from the act," she admits. And women who ever dared to be forthright about the fact that they did enjoy it were often called terrible names. Even she herself had been called a slut more times than she cares to count, all kinds of assumptions made about her character based on her marriage to Ross. That she enticed him to it through a physical relationship has been whispered around her at more than one party, though she's done all she can to ignore such things. There's not a bit of truth to them and she shouldn't allow them to hurt her.

"But Galen, what's a condom?" she asks, pronouncing the word slowly. "The nice lady doctor I met the first day said the pregnancy tests would be found next to them and when I asked her what they are, she said we would discuss it at another time."

"Yeah, well, frak that," Galen says with a short, largely unamused laugh, shaking his head. Though he's sure there are some who don't, he can't think of a single reason why women shouldn't be allowed to enjoy sex. Enjoying it is half the point, if not more. Maybe back with the fleet, there'd begun to be more emphasis placed on the necessity of procreation, to the extent that laws were changed in the name of furthering that idea, but even then, there was no one saying that it shouldn't be fun. He can't imagine it would have made much difference even if someone had been saying that. They were in the middle of a frakking war. People needed to be able to unwind somehow.

Her question gives him pause, though, his eyes widening. With what she's told him, it makes sense that she wouldn't know, but that doesn't mean he knows how to tell her, especially in light of the way things were back where she comes from. There, he's sure, for them to be having a conversation like this would have been beyond indecent. He just has to figure out how to put it as decently as he can. "It's... a pretty common form of birth control," he says, figuring he should start with what's simplest. "Something a man wears during sex so that when he... finishes... the woman he's with won't get pregnant."

Demelza has done enough reading on the biology of procreation that she knows what Galen means when he says finishes and she nods thoughtfully, even though she still doesn't quite understand.

"So he wears it on his..." Trailing off, she flushes faintly, because whether she knows the biology or not, it's still awfully intimate and while she trusts Galen more than many folks, while she had intended on asking him all along, it's difficult for her to stumble along.

Instead of trying to figure out what to say, she decides to just continue. "And it blocks his... his semen?" she all but whispers. "It sounds terribly uncomfortable."

"Yeah, that's — that's how it works," Galen says with a short nod, barely able to hold back a laugh for how unbelievably frakking awkward this is. It's all good for Demelza to know, and probably better that she hear it from a friend than a stranger or some professional who might not get what things were like where she's from, but this definitely isn't a conversation he ever thought they would be having. Even so, he almost wishes he had one with him, so he could show her what it looks like instead of trying to put it into words. "It's not uncomfortable, though. It's very thin, very light, doesn't make much difference at all, as far as the... having sex is concerned."

"Hmm," she hums softly, because she doesn't understand how that can possibly be true. But Galen must have more experience with it than she does and so she supposes she must take his word for it, at least until she has Ross try one out.

At least that won't be necessary for some time.

"The doctor said there was pills, too," she adds a moment later, wrinkling her nose. "I know it's all safe or they wouldn't suggest such things, but it just seems... well, it's so much, isn't it? So much information and all so different from what I've known."

"Yeah, I imagine it's a lot to try to take in," Galen says, because as difficult as it is for him to imagine, that's true. A transition like this is difficult enough in the first place, and something like that seems like it would only add to it. In that regard, at least, he guesses he's been lucky. For all that Darrow is a far cry from the Colonies, and even more so from living onboard a battlestar and searching for a place to call home, at least there's enough that's familiar that he hasn't had a hard time getting used to the details of life here. Being here just happens to be a different story. "They are safe, though, yeah. I've never known anyone who had problems with them."

"There are times when I feel as if I've learned so much here and at Nampara both," she admits. "Times when I look at the girl I was before I met Ross and think that I must be a hundred times smarter than I ever would have been without his support." And without Jud and Prudie in their way, too. Maybe they hadn't taught her to read, but they'd taught her so much of their way of life, taught her about Ross and Nampara, taught her all kinds of things.

"I couldn't read or write at all when I first started workin' for him and if I'd worked for someone else..." She trails off and shrugs. "Well, he never minded when I used his mining books to learn, but I know that's not how all men might've been. And I read so much here, I always have books from the library, so sometimes I feel so much smarter than I would have ever imagined and other times..." She laughs. "Other times I see how little I've truly learned."

He'd be unlikely to say so, at least in so many words, but books and writing and anything like that aside, he thinks Demelza is one of the smartest people he knows. She's got a good head on her shoulders, and a lot more sense than he's seen in people with far more education, and those are the things that really count. The fact that she's made such an effort to learn more says a lot, too. He's barely managed to find his footing here, lucky that at least this isn't a setting too unfamiliar. She seems to be learning all she can, a massive undertaking.

"I think there's always a lot more to learn," he says, shrugging, about as close to philosophical as he's likely to get. "No matter how much anyone already knows. Doesn't mean you haven't already learned a lot, too."

"This world is just so big," she says thoughtfully. "Tis even bigger than I could have ever thought because... well, there is so many of us and all our worlds are different and so with each new world, things grow larger still." It's not just her world anymore, not just the knowledge of the time and place where she's come from and Darrow, but the worlds of everyone else who has come here, too. There's much she can learn from Galen she knows she wouldn't be able to learn from anyone else. Much she can learn from Baz that she can't be taught by another.

"My letters still aren't perfect," she admits. "But I'm much better at reading than I was even before I came here. There are so many books in Darrow and no one seems to think it strange I need to ask how to say certain words. The people who work at the library are very kind with it."

"As they should be," Galen says, brow arching slightly. That sort of thing, he thinks, should be part of their job description, but it's too easy to imagine that not being the case, for people to be dismissive rather than understanding. Demelza can't help where she comes from or what she knows as a result, or what she still has to learn, but that doesn't mean everyone would see it that way, and these days, he's not too inclined to give people the benefit of the doubt. He knows far too much about what they're capable of for that. "Especially in a place like this. Everyone who shows up here is at some kind of a disadvantage, when there are all those worlds to learn about."

"And you, too," she says. "You've been that kind to me, Galen, and you've always answered my questions as best 'ee can." She hopes he understands what that means to her, why it's important and why she treasures that aspect of their friendship as much as any other. He may be her closest friend in all of Darrow and she's terribly grateful to have met him, especially on that first day. She's known so many kind and helpful people that sometimes Demelza truly doesn't understand all the negative things people say of Darrow.

Of course, she's seen animals attacking for no reason, so she supposes she understands parts of it.

"And Ross likes 'ee, too," she says, suddenly smiling. "Sometimes Ross don't admit it, but I know he do."

"Well, I'm not usually much for admitting it myself, so I can understand that," Galen says, smiling a little at the thought. Mostly, he thinks, it's habit, the way things were on warships. Showing it would be one thing — he'd have done anything for his crew, and he suspects they all knew that — but giving voice to it would have been another, and largely unnecessary. Here, the number of people he even gives a damn about is incredibly small, but other than Kara and Lee, there's no one so much as Demelza. He doesn't know Ross as well as he knows her, but he likes him, too, respects him, even. "But anything I've answered, I've been glad to."

And that is why Galen has come to be one of her most trusted friends. He's not once made her feel silly or stupid for asking such questions, has only ever seemed as if he's happy to help her and that means so much to her, especially as someone who often feels as if her questions are endless.

It's just that she wants to be able to teach Julia and their new baby everything she can.

"I like very much that school is required here for all children," she says. "I know those with money can still choose a different sort of school, but I've spoken with many people and they don't often seem to believe private schools are any better than the others."

"Yeah, and it doesn't seem like they are," Galen says, shaking his head. There are always going to be people who think it makes a huge difference and who won't hesitate to say so, but especially in a place like this, with such boundaries and limitations, there's really no way for it to. There is, for the most part, an even playing field here, or at least more of one. Whatever faults this place has, at least he can say that in its favor. "It's good. That they want all the kids to be educated, to have a chance."

"Yes. It's not like that at all where I'm from," she says. "The genteel folk get educated, of course, but most of my folk can't read or write. Tis why I'm still learning now, I ent never been taught officially. Some of the rich folks made it real clear they thought I shouldn't. Said I was putting on airs and forgetting my place."

She makes a face, then laughs. "I'm that glad this place ent like that. I'm glad it's expected that Julia will read and write. It makes me happy."

"Gods, that's hard to imagine," Galen says, shaking his head slightly. "Even for as frakked up as everything was for us, at least it wasn't quite like that." It's comforting, too, to know that, with Nicky still back there. Maybe he wasn't really the kid's father after all, and maybe that was for the best, but at least he'll be brought up as well as anyone could in the fleet. That may not be saying a whole lot, but it's something. "I'm glad, too. That's how it should be."

"Everyone deserves that," she says and she hadn't developed much of an opinion on the rights of individuals before Darrow, but she has many thoughts about it now. Ross had likely more thoughts about it than she ever had, he's a strong, smart man like that, he'd known long before Demelza that there had been inequalities in the world and that they could be fixed. Her husband will always be better at it than she is, but she thinks in Darrow she's made an attempt to at least try.

There's one place for her to start and that's with their daughter, their family, their friends. She'll never let someone be made to feel as if they're less.

"Abso-frakking-lutely," Galen agrees without hesitation. There shouldn't even be any question about that, and the fact that there are people who'd disagree is something that, while maybe not as surprising as it should be, is difficult to fathom. At least here, if there's anyone who thinks otherwise, it doesn't seem to make any kind of a difference. He may not be Darrow's biggest fan — far from it — but it does have some things going for it. "That might actually be one of the best things I can say for this place, too."

"Tis," Demelza agrees without hesitation. "At home, I knew my daughter would be given the better things in life simply because Ross had money and status, but had I not married him, it wouldn't have been the same at all. I like that Darrow is different. Even without status, she can have what she deserves and even more. Women are treated that different here."

And sometimes she still has difficulty adjusting to this new way of thinking, but overall she quite likes it.

"Yeah, I'd imagine a lot of people here wouldn't be too happy if that weren't the case," Galen says, exhaling slowly. Even if there'd been more of a discrepancy in Darrow in the way women are treated as opposed to men, there are a lot of people here who came from elsewhere who wouldn't have taken well to adjusting to that, the ones he knows included. Back home, there was no real difference at all. He never would've stopped to think that that made them lucky. "I can't imagine things being any other way."

"Twas always that way for us," she says thoughtfully. "There was a place for women and a place for men. Even those of us who weren't wealthy had the same. No women went down into the mines and if we wanted to work in that field, we were only ever bal maidens. Or we work in kitchens or takin' care of the children. Nothin' at all like what the men do."

That was the future she'd seen for herself. Until Ross, of course.

"I had as many women working with me as I did men," Galen says, shaking his head at the thought of it. It really is difficult to consider, and it makes them lucky, he supposes, that that's not the way things are here. With as frakking weird as Darrow is, with as many different places as people come from, it could just have easily been a world more like hers than like his. Maybe it wouldn't have affected him firsthand so much, but he still would've balked at it. "It must be a lot to take in. Having all these options now."

"Yes, I suppose," she says. "But at the same time, I quite like it. There are times yet when I must... change how I think so that I might understand how certain jobs are open to women now instead of just men, but I like t'do it."

She welcomes the challenge. Learning how to reframe her expectations of the world has been a pleasurable one in Darrow, not quite as it had been in Cornwall. At the time she'd had to find new ways to think about the rich folks and the poor ones, but this is something else. This is better.

"I been thinkin' perhaps I might take the GED," she says. "After the baby is born, of course."

"Yeah, that might be a good idea," Galen says, one shoulder lifting in a slight shrug. He's only learned what that is here himself, though there was something similar back in the Colonies, and it seems to him like a good jumping off point, a way of learning a little of everything. For his part, he can't see himself doing anything but working with machinery, but there's a lot someone could do here, and doing something like taking the GED would make it all that much more accessible. "That'll give you plenty of time to study up, too."

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